Natália Oszkó-Jakab

VALLEY OF ARTS has been running the Valley of Arts Festival for more than 30 years. It is the largest arts festival of Hungary with cca. 2500 programs, hundreds of artists and forty venues every year. The festival is located in three small Hungarian villages Kapolcs, Vigántpetend, and Taliándörögd. The festival profile is all-arts or multi-genre. It hosts artistic programmes from performing arts to visual arts. The Valley connects generations, the different art styles, the city with the countryside, the experts and the beginner’s gaze, the artists with the audience, traditions with the latest developments. Valley visitors do not only see performances and concerts, but also get close to the souls of their favorite artists as they live with the locals during the festival.   Natalia is the head of the Arts for Rural Development Foundation an organization dedicated to catalyzing positive change in rural areas across Hungary, which is the main organiser of 2 festivals and partner of further 4 festivals as an umbrella organisation in Hungary. The mission of the Foundation is to develop rural areas, boost regional recovery, sustainable local tourism and to contribute to infrastructural development with festivals organized in smaller villages. Therefore, Natalia is a director of two Hungarian multi-genre festivals held in smaller villages throughout Hungary. Kerekdomb Festival is held in September, in the eastern side of the country, in Tállya (Tokaj Region) and is a 3-days-long festival. This festival was launched in 2016. Her major festival is a 33-year-old greater festival held in end July in Kapolcs (Balaton Uplands). It is a multi-genre festival with 40 stages which include a major 8000 cap. venue as well as a small church for classical music with a capacity of 140 people. The festival boasts not only with its program, but with its sustainability policies as well. With the changes implemented the festival managed to diminish the waste of the festival from 49 tons to 32 tons, while only the 15% of this waste was recyclable in 2018 and this smaller amount became 35% recyclable already in the first year, in 2019 and the numbers are even improving since then.    Natalia started her career at the Palace of Arts, the greatest Venue of Hungary in 2005. She also spent two years at an international organisation while working for the Valley of Arts on a freelance basis. After she founded the Arts for Rural Development Foundation in 2013 She started her City Events Ltd. in 2020 which organises the Startup Safari Budapest, Advents and family events in Budapest. Apart from her core business Natalia is the chair of the Festival Section of the Music Hungary Association since 2017 which is the main lobby organization of the music industry in Hungary. She also the chair of the Hungarian Tourism Program Foundation as well that conducts researches in the field of cultural, business and sports events, organises monthly knowledge-sharing meetings (MeetUps), a “MTPA Restart” industry yearly conference and provides grants for those who would choose the events industry as a field of study.